


Go West

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Child Loss, F/M, Head Shaving, Light Angst, On the Run, X-Files OctoberFicFest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-22 13:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8287711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: One rainy night in Oregon they walked off the edges of the map and have never found their way back.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-S9  
> A/N: From a tumblr prompt  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

She spends a lot of time looking out the window. He knows it without even looking at her (but he can’t stop looking at her, glances that last longer than they should despite the flat, open, empty, endless highway). He is losing his grasp on her by inches as she slips over some invisible precipice.

Scully spreads the map over her knees and traces their route. They try not to use their phones. She’s folded and refolded the map so many times that it’s parting gently at the creases. He tries not to think of that as a metaphor. Maybe it makes her feel more secure to track them across the highways that slice the land into pieces. 

They have been crisscrossing the plains of the West in some sort of ersatz frontiersmanship. Mountains bite into the edges of the sky, but he still feels immensely small under the endless blue. This land has claimed so many lives. He can’t stop thinking of skeletons, bleached bones under the pale insidious sun, weathered by the wind. He thinks of their bones in the haunted house, how fragile they would look out here, jumbled together like the bones of the Brown Mountain hikers, their small treasures lost in the spaces between their ribs. They are somewhere in Wyoming; he isn’t sure anymore. Every small town looks like every other small town, dark windows like lost teeth that will never grow back. At least if they are being followed, they will see their pursuers coming, the way that Scully watches storms roll in. 

They stop for the night at another motel. He pays in cash; the guy at the counter hardly even looks up, just pushes the key across the counter. Mulder picks it up. It’s attached to one of those keychains designed to look like a vanity license plate, the kind that he’s seen at a thousand truck stops. The room number is written on one side. The other side says WILLIAM. Mulder might take it as some kind of sign, if he still believed in signs and wonders. Still, he won’t let Scully see it. 

They carry the suitcases in with the weary ease of all-too-seasoned travelers. They can pack or unpack in less than ten minutes. They used to try to put out little homey touches, but that ended months ago, after the third time they fled in the middle of the night. Scully still has a framed photograph of William in her bag, but she never takes it out. It’s wrapped in her mother’s scarf. She touches it sometimes, when she thinks he isn’t looking.

Scully walks into the bathroom and eyes her reflection. The harsh light bleaches her skin and brings out brassy highlights in her blonde wig. She scrapes the wig off her head and massages her head with a sigh, leaning into the mirror again. He’s seen that gaze before, when she was trying to stare through her skull to find the death that lurked behind her eyes.

“Chinese okay for dinner, if I can find it?” Mulder asks. "I’m craving kung pao chicken.“

"Sure,” she says, narrowing her eyes. He’s been on the other end of that look before; it’s never pleasant. He leaves her to her contemplation and makes sure to take the key. 

When he comes back with sandwiches and canned soup from the grocery store (the only Chinese restaurant had clearly closed for business some months before), Scully has shaved her head. She is picking the long locks off a towel and dropping them meticulously into a bag. He stands stock-still, stunned by the perfect curve of her skull. She must have used his clippers; she’s gotten good with them the past few months. Her hair is evenly cropped all over, red-gold down through which he can see the blue veins in her scalp.

“Oh,” he says.

“It’s easier,” she says, “to put the wigs on.” She drags the wig on to demonstrate, a practiced gesture. She looks strange as a blond, even after months of rotating through various wigs. He reaches out and gently takes it off. He hangs it on the doorknob of the bathroom (he’s been lectured enough times about how to care for the various accoutrements of their disguises). 

“I needed a change,” she tells him, and something behind her eyes is falling apart.

“You’re beautiful,” he says.

“Mulder,” she says wearily.

“I mean it,” he insists. There is an eerie, unearthly quality to her loveliness; without her hair, her eyes are even more striking, her cheekbones sharper, the fineness of the architecture of her all the more evident. He cannot stop looking at her.

She smiles, but there’s a gently bitter twist to her lips. "Show me,“ she says.

He clasps her hands, then runs his palms up her arms to her shoulders and traces the taut tendons in her neck. Her ears are revealed in their perfection now; he skims his thumbs over their edges to make her shiver. The remains of her hair prickle against his palms. He imagines he can read their journey by the marks on her skin: the veins are rivers, her scars are landmarks, and the intersections of her nerves are ticked off by mile markers. They have been to the moon and back, he thinks, or at least to the ends of the earth. One rainy night in Oregon they walked off the edges of the map and have never found their way back. Here be monsters. They have carved their own markers into their trail, into their bodies, so that at least if they cannot find their way, they are never lost.

She is restless under his hands, wincing a little. He pulls away immediately.

"Sorry,” he tells her. 

“It hurts,” she says slowly, as if she’s tasting the words to determine their truth. "I didn’t know it would hurt.“

"I wasn’t trying to…” he says and trails off as she looks at him.

“It’s all right,” she says. "I didn’t know. I’ve been lucky, I suppose. I didn’t know I’d be cold.“

He reaches for the wig with a question in his eyes, but she shakes her head.

"Warm me up, Mulder,” she tells him.

They undress themselves (most of the romance vanished along with any attempts to make any room feel like anything more than a temporary shelter) and he falls onto the bed, pulling her on top of him. The light from the lamps slants across her face as she straddles him. He steadies her with his hands on her hips. He wants to run his palms over her head again; he always thought her hair was soft, but the stubble is sharp, just one more example of her unexpected depths. She rides him with an abandon that approaches desperation and it’s all he can do to keep up with the tempo she sets, rising and falling. He knows where and how to touch her to make her come. It’s the only truly useful skill he’s ever learned, he thinks, and the only one that’s never failed him at a critical moment.

She looks down at him and there’s a halo around her. He hasn’t seen light that warm for months. If there are angels, this is what they look like: fiery and chiseled, flames in their eyes and flames around them. 

She comes with a gasp, her limber body suddenly steel. He holds her through it, waits until she dissolves into flesh again to find his own pleasure. They still use condoms, most of the time, having both seen too much traceable evidence left behind in other motel rooms; feeling her surrounding him with no barrier between them is a rare pleasure. He thrusts up into her, molding her to his hips, and the flutter of her inner muscles around him is enough to finish him. Almost before he’s caught his breath, she’s in the bathroom again, washing up. He rolls off the bed and follows her on shaky legs. She hands him a damp washcloth. It’s rough against his delicate skin, but he cleans up anyway and tosses the cloth into the sink. She is gazing into the mirror again, disbelief and dismay at odds in her eyes with a fierce defiant pride. 

“It’ll grow back,” she says, half to herself and half to him.

“I don’t care unless you care,” he tells her, wrapping her in his arms and pressing his cheek to her head. The arch of her cranium fits into the hollow of his jaw. "Your hair’s not the reason I love you.“

She leans back against his chest. "Why do you love me, Mulder? Sometimes I think all we’ve brought each other is loss and misery.”

He kisses her ear, taking a deep breath to ease the ache in his chest. "Years ago we talked about all the choices that had brought us to this moment. I still wouldn’t take them back. There’s no one else I’d rather face the end of the world with, Scully."

"If the end would come,” she says wryly.

“Maybe it won’t,” he says. "Maybe they’ll give up on us. Maybe we’ll give up and settle down somewhere, build ourselves a homestead. I could learn to play the harmonica.“ 

"That sounds miserable,” she says.

“All right, city girl,” he tells her. "Maybe we’ll rent an apartment somewhere anonymous, train the cockroaches to fetch our slippers, grunt at the neighbors, and avoid the eyes of everyone we meet.“

"Better,” she says. "Somewhere with Chinese food.“

"Definitely,” he says.

They stand in front of the mirror, staring at themselves, staring at each other. They have carved their names on each other’s hearts like pioneers at Independence Rock. They’ll endure, he thinks, standing as tall as they can under the infinity of stars. Whoever follows in their footsteps (their son, oh god, their son - he cannot stop the hope bubbling up in him) will find the trail already blazed, the path cleared and marked for his easy passage. 

Scully’s stomach growls and the moment is gone. They are mortal again, and hungry. They drag their clothes back on and microwave the soup in the miserable kitchenette. She digs a knitted hat out of their bags and he is grateful that she never lost her hair during her treatments. Her near-baldness was her choice. There will be no flashbacks; she never had a wig before they began their life on the lam. It’s funny being wanted fugitives as they pick at their chicken salad sandwiches. He always imagined a life of crime would be much more glamorous. _The Sandlot_ is on television; they watch that as Scully leans against him.

Go west, he thinks, go west and grow up with your country. They are still alive, still growing. Her hair will be proof of that, a new way to measure out the weeks of drifting from motel to motel. They make their own calendars now to mark the seasons: every holiday is a day of mourning, but they wring out moments of joy like this, just soup and sandwiches and a moment to breathe together. It’s enough.


End file.
